On this week’s show we dissect the big news of the week and make predictions on what Trion Worlds games will be here a year from now, we raise an eyebrow at Epic Games not making Save the World free yet until Jason brings in rational thought, and cap it off with a smattering of weird news. All that and more on this week’s Free to Play Cast!

If you have submissions for the show’s Weekly Bombs, have questions for the panel (nothing is off limits!), or just ideas for what you want covered you can now send them to magicman@mmobomb.com. You can also be a guest in the show, just send us why you want to host, and what topic or game you would like to cover.

Free-To-Play Cast is the official podcast (and videocast) of MMOBomb.com about free to play multiplayer online games. Free-To-Play Cast takes on the week’s biggest news with plenty of opinion, weekly bombs, community feedback, guests, laughs thrown in for good measure and much more. Have fun and expect a new episode next week!

the author

Mike "Magicman" Byrne has been a part of the MMOBomb family for years and serves as the site's current Editor-in-Chief. His love for MMOs and gaming in general has led him to covering games for numerous websites including Gamebreaker TV and XIV Nation where he proudly displays his fanboy flag for FFXIV:ARR.

3 Readers Commented

Da-Bomb to the cast… of The Cast ! Tuned into Jason’s and Troy’s streams this week, watched the cast and got a great Bless Online first look – all great content that I keep coming back for. (Especially this twitch clip of Troy singing on Twitch https://clips.twitch.tv/EphemeralQuaintPresidentPicoMause .. sorry Troy ;D). Also Da-Bomb to Heroes of The Storms. I love the Hanamura map and the game encourages me to get out of my comfort zone by offering incentives to play roles I usually avoid. P.S looking forward to BlizzCon !

A-Bomb to the vocal minorities that plague MMO forums. I used to enjoy reading through forums however these days it seems that forums have become places to spit vitriol and hate – often lacking knowledge or just for the sake of it. To emphasise, I am referring to the vocal minority of players who have track records of using forums as an outlet for whatever bee they have in their bonnet as opposed to the fair and thought-out criticisms shared by knowledgeable (or even just regular and friendly) players.

QOTW – Atlas Reactor will go within 12 months. They tried something new but didn’t double down and push it hard enough. Some ideas break boundaries but this one fell flat in front of a silent audience. Archeage will continue it’s slow downward trend before eventually being sold off (or going through another useless revamp/update). Defiance will be observed closely to see if it’s revival makes a big enough mark to show survivability and I can see Rift being focused on with the idea of maintaining a solid IP that aims for growth in playerbase. Trove is the safest – it seems to tick along just fine the way it is.

Dunno how serious you were, I would love to be on the cast, but I do not have a camera, so I’d just be audio.
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Anyhoo… For the question of the week: I think the purchase was primarily for Trove to be totally frank. Everything mentioned will survive six months, and I would give Archeage the full year. Atlas Reactor, sadly, will likely be gone very soon.
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As for Rift. Heartbreaking as it is to say, I don’t believe that it will continue. There was a rumor that the game directors might have kept their jobs, so I had held out a little hope, but that too has been dashed. Maybe it sees the year but probably not much more. Even if it does go on, it won’t be in any meaningful way. I hate to say it, but I think maintenance mode or close to it would be the best we can hope for. I just have a feeling it won’t even get that. I haven’t had the heart to log in since the news broke. Without the dev team that loved this game, I don’t know if I will again, it was part of the charm.
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As for me wishing someone else would pick it up… if there was an experienced mmorpg developer I thought could do it, I would love that. Unfotunately, the only one not to disappoint me in some major way, is Square. Honestly as much as I think Square would give it a good ol college try… I don’t think that they would get it. In fact, I don’t think any studio out there would ‘get’ Rift now.
To me, Rift was all about the theorycrafting, the customization, the choices. Alt-aholics like me could make a character for each crazy build they came up with, level in the way they wished, and even build a dimension for that character to have their own space in the world. Those that liked to do all the things on one character had that option too with multiple role slots. There is so much to do in that game that even the OCD collectors and the puzzle nerds had their niche too.
And the story. It was built fluidly, one expansion quite literally leading into the next. I know it’s an mmo story, I’m not talking hugely amazing, but it was well crafted. They also knew how to do humor without slamming pop culture references and memes in your face like some other games… (*stares at WoW*). I’m not saying there weren’t some of those things in there, but the comedy came from the whimsical nature of the characters themselves.
Point is, as unlikely as it would be, even if Square got a hold of it, given their other games, and the general nature of the way mmorpgs have been going, the customization would likely be stripped away in favor of it being ‘more accessible’. And I’m afraid the story would end up with campy, overdone humor.
In conclusion, a moment of silence for the seven years I spent in Telara.
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P.S. You’re right, I was grouchy when I wrote that comment last week, I’d just gotten the news. Now I’m just sad.